Hello darkness my old friend. I’ve got a kink in my neck. It’s a few twists away from being a real fucking problem. There’s a leak coming from my kitchen ceiling. I went up and talked to the Kid, but we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I came home from Portland on Sunday, after being snowed in for 2 days, with three-hundred Letterpressed covers for All in the wind, but no books. I’m scheduled for a binding session at Minuteman Press on Monday. We hope to have 150 copies done by end of day Tuesday. I’m playing House Wine tonight, beneath the palms for 3 hours in 50 degree weather . There are far worse ways to make a dollar. I oughta know. I missed deadline filing my income tax for 2015 so there’ll be a gap in my healthcare coverage. The Boss tells me the plumber will be by at 9:30 tomorrow morning, and I go back on shift at 5. I’ve been fighting with one of my homies, and it all seems stupid and trite, and that’s because it always is.

These are my problems on a warm winter afternoon in Hippie Town. Everything happens at once or nothing happens at all. That’s this life I’ve bought into. These years I’ve traveled down, trying to be anything other than a company man, a factory man. Never wanting to be anything like my old Man. The years slide past, nice and sleazy, while I crank out poetry on the dayshift, and play rock and roll music in wine bars, to women and friends and have an unbelievably sober and fine time.

Things are different in the other hemisphere. Folks are dealing with a whole other hierarchy of problems-shit that could relegate 90% of what’s wrong in America to an entitled and candy ass complaint. Which isn’t to say there aren’t dark corners right here at home. Somewhere someone is paying and you always do-unless you’ve got healthcare and your country isn’t being bombed and you’re white, and you can afford security to stand down the high walls of your gated community. To watch Vice’s A House Divided is to be lividly reminded that what split this country between hateful racist yahoos and the rest of us was Universal Healthcare. Which is what we deal with over here-each other and pitted so by an oligarchy with a Christian hardon. As hard as it is and as undignified is the slough we feed from in the end days of Empire–it’s probably better than anywhere else in the world. Except maybe the Netherlands.

Jim Trainer is a communicator. Growing up in the hardcore scene of the early 90’s taught him everything he needed to know about real work. Jim Trainer believes in rock and roll. It may be our only salvation in this dark world. He’s carried the torch for independent media, broadcasting ... Continue reading →